Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday March 28, 2015 @09:30AM
from the just-crazy-enough-to-work dept.

Bruce66423 writes: A fraudster used a mobile phone while inside a UK prison to email the prison a notice for him to be released. The prison staff then released him. The domain was registered in the name of the police officer investigating him, and its address was the court building. The inmate was in prison for fraud — he was originally convicted after calling several banks and getting them to send him upwards of £1.8 million.

That's easy, because the media doesn't report it. If however, you head down to your local police department/service, you can request a crime log for the week, some places even have daily reports you can pick up. Which lists all arrested offenses, and minor calls(vandalism, theft under, non-violent domestics, etc) out. In many cases these are published to the media every day, and they decide what they're going to tell the public.

We have a local paper that's free and has a list of reported crimes in the last 24 hours for the neighborhoods the paper covers. Pretty scary sometimes when you realize how many of your neighbors are victims/criminals on a daily basis.

In that case the FBI did have the imagination to hire the perp. One can only hope someone in the UK's security services does have a similar attitude - though he does deserve a few months inside to discourage him from a repeat.

Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be

Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here. Here's why: 1) It costs the bank's customers through higher credit interest and lower debit interested 2) If the bank fails customers are likely to lose out (although most individual customers will have their deposits guaranteed by the state) 3) The state guarantees deposits of individual customers (up to a certain limit) so, if the state has to bail out those customers, we all pay.

a) he's not stealing from people, but from criminal organizations; b) you people with bank accounts are only hurt because you allowed the banksters to latch themselves onto you in ways that hurt you whether they win or lose, so it is your fail, not his.

Some people who run banks have committed crimes and gotten away with them. That does not make banks "criminal organizations," equivalent to drug mafias. Also, stealing from a bank has harmful consequences to plenty of innocent people which stealing from a drug cartel does not.

Your rationalization of "well if you get hurt when I steal from them that is your fault and I am innocent" only applies to actual criminal organizations, not to ones that you have personally decided to label "criminal" even though th

On the contrary, it is the bank institutions that are the problem, not the individuals that work for them.

Why is a mobster a mobster? Because she believes she is above and beyond the law, by using either violence or criminally obtained money as a lever of influence. How is a bankster like a mobster? Well, she uses other people's money as a lever of influence.

How is a bankster worse than a mobster? Well, she has managed to manipulate the system on such a broad scale, that her usage of other people's money

A mobster is not a mobster for believing she is above the law. A mobster is a mobster for running a mob, which is an organization that breaks the law (and uses violence) as a routine part of their business. Banks do not do this...their routine business is perfectly legal. Therefore banks are not mobs, and those who run banks are not mobsters.

One who believes one's self to be above the law, but still acts within the law's boundaries, is neither a mobster nor a criminal.One who does break the law is a crim

I'm sure most women wouldn't object to not being called mobsters, but if you're really concerned about it, use they and get the number agreement wrong. Using "she" is just distracting.

Also, it's not sexist. Defaulting to one gender, usually male, is how most languages deal with the issue. It's just understood that the gender is indeterminate. For instance, Spanish uses "ellos" for a group of mixed gender people, while "ellas" is referred to a group of only women. No one gets confused by this.

lol. Why bother avoiding accusations of sexism? You're an anonymous coward on Slashdot. What are you afraid they're going to do to you?

Anyway, the right way to treat people who are too easily offended is to brush them off, not acquiesce to their neurosis. If enough people call them on their bullshit, they'll grow a thicker skin and stop being so easily offended, and that's better for everyone in the long run.

HSBC has been laundering money for drug cartels for quite a while now, and nothing's been done about it, and no one is prosecuting them. Money laundering IS a crime, so this by definition makes this bank a criminal organization.

how is convincing banks to send u money stealing the bank managers should go to prison for being as thick as clotted cream, that's been left out by some clot, and now the clots are so clotted, you couldn't unclot them with an electric de-clotter,

Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be

Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here. Here's why: 1) It costs the bank's customers through higher credit interest and lower debit interested 2) If the bank fails customers are likely to lose out (although most individual customers will have their deposits guaranteed by the state) 3) The state guarantees deposits of individual customers (up to a certain limit) so, if the state has to bail out those customers, we all pay.

banks don't fail over $1.8m if they weren't going to fail already.

The banks can't just raise rates to make up for it, either, then customers will go elsewhere. If anything this just encourages banks to operate with more efficiency.

Having worked in finance, I can assure you that pretty much everyone* has access to investment vehicles with a larger return than 2%. The problem is that those investments are significantly more risky than a bank, and losing the investment is unlikely to be catastrophic to someone with a large supply of other diversified assets, but it could be catastrophic to someone with only a weekly paycheck to fall back on.

The solution to that problem is to properly diversify your investments for safety. An investment adviser can help with that, but they'll charge a fee for their work, and many people feel (accurately or not) they can't afford that service. There are books and other resources to assist someone in wisely choosing their own investments, but that requires ambition, effort, and the admission that one is not naturally a financial expert. That last part seems to be the most difficult to come by.

* American, not already in excessive debt, with a stable income... some disclaimers apply, but the vast majority of the American population qualifies, not just those who fall under the "rich" label.

You can tell me that, but I have noticed that as soon as a particular good investment becomes available to those not "well connected", it stops being a decent investment. E.g., CDs and Treasury bond consistently produce less than the rate of inflation. Back when they were only available to a few they produced quite good rates of return. (And actually, for a few years after they were opened up they still beat inflation...but not for long.)

Let's assume that someone without "enough spare income for a whole portfolio" has the desire to invest, and the ambition and effort to do their own research. They'll find a whole class of funds and brokers that will pool several clients' investments into a single security purchase, and those brokers will often accept even a few dozen dollars' investment at a time. Most will also diversify investments appropriately, as well, as a part of their normal business.

By definition it's not possible for everyone to be able to beat inflation.

Only for very wide definitions of "everyone", including VC investment, R&D, government subsidies, international trade, and every other economic influence, many of which are high-risk investments that effectively dump most of their money into lower-risk investment vehicles.

I'm not suggesting that if everyone invested in a widely-diversified portfolio, they'd be rich. That's ridiculous, since that's exactly what banks do with their abysmally low-return (but very safe) accounts.

Yes, and the customers or state would still foot the bill, because the insurance premium raises the cost of doing business for all banks, making the interest rate spread offered to customers higher and a bank in trouble more likely to fail, due to the increased difficulty of making profits when the cost of business is higher.

Stealing from someone where insurance will cover it just means you're stealing from a lot of people instead of just one.

Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be

Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here.

And that's ontop of the hurt from the bankers defrauding us all already. Fuck the banks. Their whole model is based on other peoples money. They use your money to make their money, don't share profits and pass losses onto you. Fuck the bankers, fuck them all.

... which will boost inflation and reduce the value of everyone's money.

which will boost inflation and reduce the value of everyone's money so little that you wouldn't even notice. FTFY. Rich people might have enough money affected that it might be a minor inconvenience to them, which is why they, their news organizations, and their useful idiots in politics think this needs to be such a worry for all of us.

At the onset of the financial crisis in September 2007 with the collapse of Northern Rock, liquidity concerns drew public scrutiny towards Libor. Barclays manipulated Libor submissions to give a healthier picture of the bank's credit quality and its ability to raise funds. A lower submission would deflect concerns it had problems borrowing cash from the markets.

About what index is used for variable mortgages (*hint* it is not LIBOR):

What is a Standard Variable Rate?

A Standard Variable Rate is (rather obviously) a type of variable rate – this means your payments can go up or down according to movements in interest rates.
Unlike a tracker, a Standard Variable Rate (or SVR) does not track above the Bank of England Base Rate at a set percentage.

What is the Bank of England Rate

Changes are recommended by the Monetary Policy Committee and enacted by the Governor.

Not quite. There's a little trick, fractional reserve. The bank loans you $10k, you put it in the bank, they immediately loan $9500 of that to someone else, who puts it in the bank... Effectively the amount of currency in circulation can be vastly greater than the amount of currency that actually exists. Debt itsself becomes currency.

The big down-side to this is that it becomes possible, in theory, for the bank to run out of money and hundreds of thousands of people to lose everything they have through no f

You only know because they caught the man; in the USA the guy would still be free and nobody would be the wiser.

If somebody noticed anything fishy the usual lazy excuse of "It's not my job" would prevent actions from being taken; unless, you can be fired or sued few people here lift a finger.... and if you do take selfless initiative you are equally at risk of being fired or sued.

The place I worked as a guard had this happen. We held inmates from a bunch of counties in several states. One of the PDs fax machine broke and they would go across the street to Kinkos and fax release orders on their letterhead. After a while they would just use paper without the letterhead. An inmates wife simply faxed an improvised release form and we sent her husband home. He got cought when he arrived because the PD had no release on file. Everything changed after that, a phone call was required with proper ID.

I had to go through jury selection a few months back for a capital case, going through three or four rounds of appearances and interviews. Part of what struck me about the experience is how incredibly poor the paperwork was. They gave us number cards when there were 250+ people to go through in my group, they were all handwritten even though the numbers corresponded with the computer-generated numbers we were assigned when the original mailing for service was sent. Forms and questionnaires looked like they were generated in Clarisworks by first-time users in elementary school. Nothing had letterhead, nothing had any sort of official feel.

Your story about no letterhead and using fax machines is totally believable to me, and I'm amazed that it isn't abused more often.

I had to go through jury selection a few months back for a capital case, going through three or four rounds of appearances and interviews. Part of what struck me about the experience is how incredibly poor the paperwork was. They gave us number cards when there were 250+ people to go through in my group, they were all handwritten even though the numbers corresponded with the computer-generated numbers we were assigned when the original mailing for service was sent. Forms and questionnaires looked like they were generated in Clarisworks by first-time users in elementary school. Nothing had letterhead, nothing had any sort of official feel.

Your story about no letterhead and using fax machines is totally believable to me, and I'm amazed that it isn't abused more often.

Courts have no money for electronic upgrades, and when they have the money they have to fight a bureaucracy to get them. Seattle is still using DOS-based systems.

I have a history of depression, and there's a common survey that medical offices use to get a rough feel for a person's depression and/or anxiety level. In fact, it is so common that in the four states I have filled out the survey, I'm pretty sure that every single one was a generational photocopy of the same document. In many cases it has a slight "right" lean and offset that is recognizable; in others there's a "blur" along the left side, as though it was copied with a stack of papers on top of it or from

I know the actions were criminal but I sort of admire the guy. It makes me wonder about human nature and it did take a lot of talent to do what he did. Somebody will make a movie out of this and we will hear from this guy again. With his talents he just has to keep on doing this stuff.

My guess is because it's just emerged in court probably at his trial. The article states he will be sentenced on 20th April, implying that the pre-sentence reports are now being prepared. Before now the prison service probably kept it quiet; and hopefully will have improved their procedures by now.

a process problem: either the process sucks or the prison staff are not following process.Release notices by email? By email from an unofficial email address? By unencrypted, undigitally-signed email from an unofficial email address?

Coordinator: Crucifixion?Mr. Cheeky: Er, no, freedom actually.Coordinator: What?Mr. Cheeky: Yeah, they said I hadn't done anything and I could go and live on an island somewhere.Coordinator: Oh I say, that's very nice. Well, off you go then.Mr. Cheeky: No, I'm just pulling your leg, it's crucifixion really.Coordinator: [laughing] Oh yes, very good. Well...Mr. Cheeky: Yes I know, out of the door, one cross each, line on the left.